Two days after my surgery and I'm reclining in my office chair and enjoying some light gaming. Just played my first episode of The Walking Dead series and I'm loving it. I'm glad that I waited until all the episodes were available before I started. Otherwise, the waiting would have sucked. It's always cool to play games where your decisions affect the story, and it's a good story at that. It takes place not to far from where I live, so it's fun to hear the various references about places I've been many times. I keep waiting for the writers to screw up their directions, but they've been dead-on (pun intended).

I'm also playing Bit.Trip Runner2 and that's a lot of fun as well. It's obviously a platformer, but one that involves rhythm expert timing to complete levels. Mindless fun with ramping difficulty that's totally worth the asking price.

Finished up Dishonored last week and found the game to be quite enjoyable. The powers were great and the freedom the game gives you for tackling problems was really satisfying. I did a low chaos run, but I was always tempted to just go crazy. The melee combat had a great feel to it, something that seems hard to capture in many games.

Picked up Max Payne 3 from a sale a while back and finally gave it a spin. Aside from the horrifically large install (~30GB), and the obligatory rockstar social registration, I'm having a great time with it. What I like most about the game is the checkpoint system, if you die you repeat practically nothing, which is great for me. It's a game I wasn't super interested to play in the first place, so the low level of commitment that the checkpoints provide keep me playing. I did play the first two all the way through, and the story is told differently, I'm not sure which is better.

Finished Dishonored the second time, this time going for a High Chaos run. I find it difficult to do that, usually, since if a game give an option of knocking out rather than killing then I feel I'd rather knock out. Been like that ever since I set foot in Thief. Still, I did like the changes the Chaos rating made, though mostly they were subtle. I'd like to see more, and maybe a sequel with a more open world approach and larger levels. Most of the missions were pretty linear and didn't make as much use of the potential as I thought it could have done. However, I definitely recommend it.

Now, bring on Bioshock Infinite, and anyone who hasn't pre-ordered, do so! I want enough people to pre-order, so I get my free copy of X-Com!

I think Bioshock might be one of the games I get with my new GPU but I'm not sure. I haven't heard anything about the multiplayer, but everything I've read says the single player is almost as amazing as Half Life 2 was. I can't wait to play it.

After seeing and hearing about the amazing rigs that many people have on these forums; it seems rather silly for me to the specs of my very modest gaming PC. It works and that's good enough for me.

Well, my fears about XCom were unfounded. This game is great. It's a nice blend of simplified base management, while still retaining the essence of the original, and the combat rounds are awesome. I do miss the original soundtrack, just because that played such a role in my youth, but apart from that this is a winner!

Finished Tomb Raider in 14 hours. 73% with no interest in completing the remaining 27%. The game is indeed amazing with frequent narrative and character development that make for a superb story. The game to follow hints at a more tropical setting in Croatia. I do hope they keep this going. As much as I loved the previous Tomb Raiders, this new path is totally welcome. Can't wait for the next one!

Played a few hours last night, and let me tell you, fucking awesome. Intro, brilliant. Reminiscent of BS1 (don't know what the intro to BS2 was, may have been similar). The world is just gorgeous. Brilliantly detailed, and dare I say it, realistic, for a floating city build of bricks and mortar. The period clothing, weapons, speech are wonderful. Combat is hectic and unnerving and the enemies will swarm you from all sides. So far few areas where you can go off the beaten track, but there are hints that the world might open up more later, and while it will likely remain linear, there will be opportunities to hunt for secrets.

Enemies met so far include infantrymen and women (ok, that part of the period is less accurate!) and a cabal of black klad klansmen who have vigor powers (the same as the tonics from the other BS games)

There are also NPCs who don't really interact, but may point you in interesting directions or help in various other ways.

Far Cry 3 is the bomb! I'm about 16 hours in and, judging by the area I've left to uncover, I'm maybe halfway through the story. At first I thought the whole killing animals/crafting element would be a nuisance. Not at all. I love that you can go hunting in between missions and on side missions. I've crafted everything, save for a few items that require dedicated missions to complete. This time around, the story is great and it keeps you moving. Lose your friends to kidnappers, become a warrior and save them. There's a ton of stuff to do, so you never get bored. Can't wait to get back to it each night.

Finished Medal of Honor: Warfighter. A step-back from the previous Medal of Honor game, which itself wasn't much to write home about. The story tries to be authentic by using real-life special ops missions, which were inadvertently confirmed by the government when they reprimanded several SEALs for divulging classified info to the developers. However, as a result the story feels extremely disjointed and also a rip-off of the SEAL movie Act of Valor in terms of set pieces, narrative, and direction. The cutscenes in-between missions are cringe-worthy propaganda pieces (despite looking incredible). I appreciate the game's attempt at realism by including the real names of the weapons and gear you use, but it goes further in limiting everything you use to what was licensed from specific defense corporations. I doubt every special forces team in the world only uses Daniel Defense's M4 rifles when there are several other corporations to choose from, or Trijicon being the sole optics manufacturer.

The gameplay in the game is straight-up Call of Duty. It's just a linear corridor shooter with inept AI, only there are considerably fewer scripted events to occupy your attention. Even on easier difficulty levels you can die really easily, so you're forced to constantly take cover and take pot shots at enemies, who are always behind cover and are deadly accurate. Unfortunately, your weapons spray bullets everywhere but your target, so the game devolves into a boring shooting gallery with defective guns. Also there are no characters to really get attached to except maybe one you might remember from the previous game.

Despite the shortcomings the voice acting is stellar and there's something really fluid and mesmerizing about movement in the game. Walking and aiming feels incredibly natural and it's the sole reason there's even a semblance of slower, tactical action in the game. The multiplayer is a buggy mess and everything is a fucking unlockable. It can be fun and the gunplay is better than Call of Duty but the level design and interface are atrocious.

I also finished BioShock 2. It's basically a repeat of the first BioShock but in new locations with new weapons. I like the level design a lot more than the first BioShock as there are less sprawling mazes and annoying backtracking to do. The gunplay still feels weird and sluggish, like none of your attacks carry any power or reacts well with the world. The game does a better job of keeping the narrative more coherent and focused than the first game, although at the cost of being very predictable. Tons of awesome background filler and as always a very gorgeous environment with incredible art deco architecture. The BioShock mythos and world is explored even more deeply and it feels much more alive. The DLC, Minerva's Den, had itself a plot twist just as shocking as the first game's plot twist -- in fact more so. It was an incredibly sad, though short, mission and definitely worth a purchase. All in all I enjoyed BioShock 2 but it suffered from the same repetition as the first game -- predictable encounters, few enemy variations, and there wasn't much reason to diversify your use of the available weapons and plasmids beyond just a few.

Finished up Far Cry 3 today, and my experience was similar to Fish's, great game, tons of fun to play. I actually thought the story was rather compelling as well, wasn't expecting that. And man, the voice acting/character facial expression was some of the best I think I've seen. Finished around 17 hours.

Started Bioshock Infinite today, and my first impression is that the game rocks....and then I go to quick save.. WTF!? Are you kidding me? It's so infuriating to me that the developers refused to implement this feature into the game. Especially if the game is anything like the previous bioshocks, where I would explore every nook and cranny. Not only that but when I want to stop playing, I want to stop playing, I don't want to have to continue simply because I have no choice to save my game.

Crysis 3. What a pointless game. It's not a sequel so much as an expansion to Crysis 2. Gorgeous visuals but the aesthetics still don't seem to reach the levels set by Crysis 1. The combat is just boring as fuck, the alien AI is dumber than a sack of bricks, the story is even more hamfisted, and the characters are even more one-dimensional and stupid. The campaign is about half the length of the previous two games and even shorter still when you factor in the incredible amount of cut-scenes. There's an infuriating boss battle at the end and that's if the game doesn't crash every two minutes.

Still, I felt like this was a better game overall than Crysis 2 thanks to the wider maps and greater degree of flexibility. Crysis 2 was just a super-powered Call of Duty.

After 1 hour of Assassins Creed 3, I have half a mind to turn it off and not look back. After playing all the games up until this one, the last thing I wanna deal with the a change up in the control scheme. If it was for the better, and I felt it, then great. But this is gonna stick with me. Having to get reacquainted makes me feel like a noob (don't say it).

Oh. Wha??? [wipes spit off face] Must have fallen asleep. Game's boring so far. If you're not into playing checkers with a grubby Englishman, there's nothing to do in between missions. You can run around and climb synch points, but nothing opens up, save for the immediate area. No loot chests, no stores or blacksmiths and no side missions. I'm sure this will change eventually when I actually begin to play as an assassin, but the character change doesn't seem to be within reach. The guy I'm playing as now can do much of the same stuff, but there's little motivation. Killing guards gets old quick with the subpar control scheme and the on-rails combat moves takes away much of the freedom you had with the earlier games. I'm not feeling a step up with this game. Not at all.

AC3 has a very long intro/tutorial sequence, basically. Like several hours long. It makes sense considering the scale of the rest of the game, but it does drag on a bit, especially if you're not into following the story and absorbing the setting.

Burned through Hotline Miami over the weekend. Very bizarre game. I love the Snes feel and the 80's vibe. The gameplay is simple but very trial and error which can lead to some frustration. Almost everything dies with one hit....including you. The story and the way it unfolds is like you've dropped acid and got your hands on some PCP. I was able to follow it up to a point but then it just got strange....which is saying a lot. Short but fun. Certainly worth 5 bucks I paid for it.

Wow, lol... So some recent shenanigans with the RMAH (exploit allowed duping billions of gold) and Blizzard's complete unwillingness to do a rollback when it was so severely needed, along with the revocation of the previous policy that gold could never be sold for less than $0.25 per million... The price of gold in Diablo III has PLUMMETED to around 30 cents per 10,000,000. Yeah... Even I picked up a couple bucks' worth.

Finishing up Metro: Last Light. What an excellent game. It's everything that Metro 2033 was but much more polished. Better graphics, excellent optimization (I went back and played 2033 and frequently dipped under 30 FPS but on M:LL I rarely went under 60), tighter narrative, cooler environments, a much more realized backstory, and the gameplay is solid and responsive. Almost every fault of mine with the original has been answered. I'm very pleased with this.

Also, Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon was good fun. The humor is what Duke Nukem Forever should have been and the gameplay is almost Crysis-like. People need to make DLC packs that are stand-alone. I usually beat a game and never go back to enjoy the DLC because it usually requires having to redo some portion of the original game.

Also, it just makes business sense. You can reuse original assets, repurpose them into something original, and capture the market that only buys cheap games.

What am I saying? I mean I'm finally playing Life occasionally, when I get a chance from my real existence in Skyrim.

Oh damn, this game has pulled me in like no other RPG for ages - Last one was Fallout 3 and before that was Neverwinter Nights. Fallout NV, Oblivion and Morrowind, while all good, just never caught me. But Skyrim. Ahhhhhh! Loving it!

Mildly modded, but nothing extensive, just a little to help the immersion.

jacobvandy wrote:Wow, lol... So some recent shenanigans with the RMAH (exploit allowed duping billions of gold) and Blizzard's complete unwillingness to do a rollback when it was so severely needed, along with the revocation of the previous policy that gold could never be sold for less than $0.25 per million... The price of gold in Diablo III has PLUMMETED to around 30 cents per 10,000,000. Yeah... Even I picked up a couple bucks' worth.

That's not really accurate jacob. They had lowered the price floor anyways with the 1.08 patch since it was long overdue already (it was selling under 5 cents per million from 3rd party for quite a while). The gold dupe bug didn't really have anything to do with it... Actually it was the price floor decrease that caused the bug (some sort of stack overflow because of the larger stack size). I'd agree that a rollback was probably the best solution but they opted to manually audit instead. Blizzard reported that only 435 people actually actively used the dupe so maybe it did make more sense for them to do it that way. Either way, it was quite the shake-up and the bnet forums were a zoo (on crack... cuz they're normally a zoo anyways) for about a week.

If all they did was audit a supremely-small chunk of users that actively abused the bug, there's no way they cleaned up all the duped gold. I guarantee you billions made it into circulation, across thousands and thousands of players. That's why it warranted a roll-back, because they're not going to audit thousands of random people who had their [probably outrageously-priced] multi-million item actually sell because the gold didn't mean anything to the buyer. Maybe the buyer lost the item because he duped the gold used to buy it, but taking that gold back from the seller would just be throwing gas on the fire. It's not his problem where the guy got the gold from...

jacobvandy wrote:If all they did was audit a supremely-small chunk of users that actively abused the bug, there's no way they cleaned up all the duped gold. I guarantee you billions made it into circulation, across thousands and thousands of players. That's why it warranted a roll-back, because they're not going to audit thousands of random people who had their [probably outrageously-priced] multi-million item actually sell because the gold didn't mean anything to the buyer. Maybe the buyer lost the item because he duped the gold used to buy it, but taking that gold back from the seller would just be throwing gas on the fire. It's not his problem where the guy got the gold from...

They said they got about 85% of the duped gold out of the market. I never said they got it all out. I also agreed that a rollback seemed like the best way to correct it 100%. The dupe is not the reason for the drop in the bnet gold price floor though. You made it sound like all the duped gold was the reason for the drop in price and that is just simply incorrect. Gold has actually gone up in price (last I checked a couple days ago) since they did the audit and re-opened the markets, and seems to be holding steady both on bnet and 3rd party so far. Before 1.08 gold was actually selling/trading at about 3.5 cents per million so the rmah price was about 7 times too high to begin with.

Doly, your first mistake is believing anything Blizzard says about the fiasco... They're going to misrepresent the facts as much as possible to make it look like less of a blunder. 15% of a trillion (or whatever amount was created, could even have been more based on my understanding of how the glitch worked) is still a lot, enough to affect an economy.

jacobvandy wrote:Doly, your first mistake is believing anything Blizzard says about the fiasco... They're going to misrepresent the facts as much as possible to make it look like less of a blunder. 15% of a trillion (or whatever amount was created, could even have been more based on my understanding of how the glitch worked) is still a lot, enough to affect an economy.

No, my mistake was bothering to clear up the circumstances of the change in the gold rate (because, you know... I was there when it actually happened) when you really just wanted the opportunity to rag on the game and Blizzard. Pardon me and carry on. I was only trying to clear up a factual error in your post regarding the actual timeline of the change.

Ellsworth,

I have Grid 2 pre-ordered on Steam and I've voted for a Grid 2 Frag Night for next month.

Oh lighten up, Doly. Of course I want to rag on Blizzard, they're a bunch of corporate idiots now. But you know I like the game, I'm the only one around here besides you that actually plays it anymore.

Still trudging through Assassins Creed III but I'm not that into it. The story's decent but nothing seems to hit the bar that the three previous games did. There are tons of bugs and control issues as well. I'm gonna keep playing it, but I'm itching to start something else like Bioshock Infinite.

Yeah, I'm really struggling to get through Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. The combat is great... but that's literally it. The characters (there are none), the voice acting, the dialogue, the story, the backstory, the graphics, the setting, the inventory, the interface, and the controls SUCK. I mean it's a fine RPG but without a decent story or really anything to carry the phenomenal combat through I just can't seem to get myself around to playing it.

As usual, I'm late to the scene but I just finished up The Walking Dead adventure game....though I hesitate to call it a game. It's more of an interactive story almost like the old choose your own adventure books from my younger days. It uses really simple mechanics for game play so it can focus on the story and damn, is it ever effective. Several times it slapped around my emotion gland before just straight up punching it. It left me pretty drained mentally. Each episode take around 2 hours to complete so with 5 episodes, you're looking at a 10 hour game if you're quick. It is well worth it. If you don't have this game, get it! Be warned, there are some bugs with the PC version that can suddenly alter the choices you've made (happened to me) so I'd say the Xbox or PS3 would be the better platform but you're more likely to find a great deal on PC.